"…I'm not sure this is a good idea", Mizuki mumbled again, squinting at his friend.

Aoba, meanwhile, grinned and kept stocking the drinks fridge. The Black Needle had just opened its doors, and the smell of ink and disinfectant still persisted on Aoba's nose. It would dissipate within the hour, as the customers started to arrive, mixing their personal scents into the air of the store. For the moment, he contented himself with rummaging among the bottles and humming, enjoying his good mood for a change.

He was glad his friend had acquiesced and allowed him to work in the bar counter at the Black Needle, in exchange of being able to sleep on the back shop. He didn't like to feel like a freeloader, but he didn't want to go back to his granny's house for a while, either; their last argument had been loud and sour, punctuated by a bang of the door when he left with just a light backpack and his allmate. ...It's not that I don't want to come back ever, but… not now, he thought, tightening his lips in a straight line.

"Okay, then…" Mizuki planted himself in front of Aoba with his hands on his hips, adopting a casual boss-like attitude that made Aoba smirk. Mizuki cleared his throat and Aoba got ready to hear a boring speech. "Remember the rules and everything will go just fine… I hope. They order, they pay, you pour their drink: in that order, especially in the weekends or when the shop is packed."

"Got it."

"…And you are not allowed to drink more than you serve, you hear me? A drink at the end of the night is fine, but otherwise you will be too expensive to keep… Oh". Mizuki glared at the beer on the countertop, obviously belonging to Aoba, and his friend grabbed the neck of the bottle and finished it in two long gulps.

"What?" Aoba looked back at him with fake innocence on his face, and Mizuki groaned.

"Never mind. Just… avoid getting plastered, okay?" His tone rose two octaves. "And no drugs here, for fuck's sake, we are trying to keep the shop clean of that."

"Yeah, yeah…"

Aoba busied himself with the shelves of liquors, ignoring his friend on purpose. He didn't even know why he took the trouble to lecture him; the two of them knew each other pretty well, after all, so Mizuki could predict what he would and would not do. And some things were rather unavoidable. No need to make promises that he wouldn't be able to keep.

Mizuki sighed loudly.

"And remember this is only a temporary arrangement; don't make yourself too at home."

Aoba raised his eyebrows at this.

"Hey, I need a place to stay and you need help with the bar; Takazawa and you are pretty busy with the tattoo parlour to attend the bar on top of that, and you know how this place gets in the weekends…"

"…Yeah, I know, but…"

"So it's a win-win situation! Cheer up, you get to work with your best friend!"

Mizuki still didn't seem very convinced, and Aoba couldn't blame him. He could count at least ten reasons for his concerns (they really knew each other too well), but Aoba had promised him he wouldn't burn the bar, start fights with the customers and try not to get high while on the clock. What else could he promise? Mizuki was a prissy sometimes, especially when it came to his beloved Black Needle. It made Aoba feel torn between jealous and annoyed.

"Hey, it's the shop open?"

They both turned towards the guy leaning at the front door frame. It was a kid, really, too young to wear so many metal chunks on his face. Try to pass through a metal detector with all that, ha!, Aoba thought with a smirk. I would like to see him in an airport. His clothes were strange, all in matching green, black and white, so Aoba automatically catalogued him as a weirdo in search of a tattoo, and not a bar customer.

"Ah, it's you again!" Mizuki greeted the newcomer with a wide grin. "Of course, welcome back! Come and take a sit!"

He walked in and sat on the couch at the make-do waiting room. Mizuki approached him and took out his drawing notebook.

"Taka is about to arrive. Meanwhile, can I show you my latest designs for tattoos? I'm sure I can get you interested for one, at least…"

The kid grunted and grabbed the notebook, starting to pass pages without much enthusiasm. In fact, he looked thoroughly bored, ad odds with the usual effervescence of Mizuki's usual customers when they were about to get a new tattoo or piercing.

"Please, take a good look before rejecting the idea… I think this one would fit you nicely."

Mizuki pointed at a drawing on his notebook and left the boy alone, returning to Aoba's side behind the bar counter. As usual, he started to whisper to his friend as soon as he thought the kid wouldn't hear him.

"A regular. Not keen on tattoos, but we will get there. He has to get bored of piercings soon… You don't want to know what places he has them on… No, don't ask!" Aoba giggled at that. "Taka won't be happy to see him again so soon, he was livid after putting him the last one; I thought he was going to pass out of the nerves."

"So… down there?"

Aoba leaned over the counter to study the boy, wondering where must have been the exact spot of that last and troubling piercing. He was just a boy, true, a couple of years younger than him (That means he is underage, the fuck!, he cursed), but still hot. If one tried to ignore that awful outfit and the metal crap on his face, the kid had an exotic air around him, handsome and manly features and a well defined body. And a pierced dick. Aoba couldn't take that image out of his mind. Fuck! Now he wanted to see it badly.

He was about to turn and ask Mizuki if the kid was foreign, when obviously the weight of his gaze started to be too much to hold and the kid raised his eyes from the notebook, frowning. He was clearly against being ogled that way, Aoba supposed, biting his bottom lip in embarrassment at being caught staring. But then the annoyance on the boy's face turned into something else at noticing him for the first time since he entered the shop; something Aoba couldn't name. I bet he is good at poker; I can't read his face at all, he thought.

The kid with the piercings stood up and came closer to the bar area, his eyes focussed on Aoba the whole time.

"Why don't you sit down and drink something while you wait, Noiz?" Mizuki offered.

The boy (Noiz, what kind of name is that?, Aoba scoffed on his mind. That's not Japanese for sure) nodded, but refused to sit.

"A coke."

He had the lightest of accents, now that Aoba paid attention. He talked slow and carefully, but his voice was deeper than Aoba had noticed before. It made his stomach tingle.

"Don't you prefer a beer, or something stronger?" he offered, putting on his new bartender persona.

"I pass. Just a coke."

Oh. Of course, he doesn't have the age to drink. Although he really didn't want to put Mizuki in trouble getting an underage inebriated, he was tempted to insist. A part of him wanted to get the kid drunk and make bad things to him. You are a bartender now, control yourself!, he scolded himself, and Mizuki groaned by his side, obviously too aware of his friend's greedy glances.

When he got his coke in front of him, though, Noiz sat down on a stool in front of Aoba. Mizuki shook his head and headed to the back shop to keep doing the daily tasks. Or perhaps he just didn't want to hear whatever exchange the boy and his friend would have next. Both options suited him.

"Do you also put piercings?" Noiz blurted all of a sudden.

Taken by surprise, Aoba blinked before answering.

"On the customers, you mean? No, I only work at the bar."

"Oh". If he was disappointed, he didn't show it. "I wanted you to put one on me."

"Well, that won't happen." But Aoba's mind came again to that mental image of before and had to clear his throat to make it go and focus on the face of the boy… and not on that other part of him. It was a cute face, so it wasn't that difficult.

"I thought perhaps you were like an assistant. Do they put on dyes, as well?"

Aoba blinked again.

"Dyes?"

"You know, to your hair. Why else would you wear your hair in that colour?"

Ah, this. Aoba caressed his hair ends, protectively; his hair was rather messy, but he was still proud of it. He thought it looked good, when it was just washed and combed: long and glossy and soft. It wasn't at his best moment right then, but he still felt insulted by the kid's words.

"It's not a dye, it's my natural colour."

Noiz raised one of his tiny eyebrows; the other remained low, and Aoba envied that skill.

"How it's that even possible? You are lying, right? I have never seen anyone with natural blue hair."

Aoba pouted.

"Well, it's your fucking business what you believe, but I'm not lying."

"This calls for a demonstration."

"Eeeh?"

The boy leaned on the counter with a naughty grin, showing his perfect canines.

"I demand a proof that you are saying the truth."

Aoba was about to snap at him, but a part of him made him shut his trap. Perhaps the part of him that found that smirk alluring and sexy.

"Namingly?"

Noiz nodded and licked his lips. Aoba followed the movements of that pointed rosy appendix.

"Namingly, you could show me what colour is the hair on your crotch."

Aoba felt his cheeks go hot, but before he could laugh it off or tell him to fuck off, his lips moved without his consent.

"I'll do it if you show me your dick's piercings."

Mizuki pushed open the back shop door with his foot and stepped in the bar area carrying a heavy box with glasses and bottles, making a racket. He betted he would find his old friend already arguing with that odd costumer of his, but to his utter surprise they were exactly where he had left them, staring at each other with a serious face. Only the blush on Aoba's cheeks hinted at the fact that they had actually talked.

"Oi, Aoba, help me with this, would you?" he asked, squinting at Noiz.

The boy stood up in a lazy jump, a kind of feline movement only a teenager could pull, and Mizuki didn't miss the hungry eyes with which Aoba followed him.

"Actually", Noiz said, in his slow and monotonous voice, "I'll come another day for the piercing."

He scribbled something on a paper napkin.

"Ah… Well. Have you decided on the tattoo?"

"Not yet. Laters!"

And he left, without a final glance back at Aoba or at the shop in general. The napkin lied there, on the counter, along with some coins, until Mizuki sighed and reached for it.

"Oh, for fuck's sake… Come on, Aoba, you know it's for you, take it already!"

He kind of didn't want to, but he ended grabbing the paper from Mizuki's hands before his friend would take a peek at the words written in there.

"What does he say?"

"It's… an address. And a time: tonight, after midnight, when you close". He looked up at Mizuki with a satisfied grin. "It seems I have a date!"

Mizuki shook his head and laughed.

"Congratulations, you have barely started your shift and you already have a date! That took me a whole week, just for your information."

Aoba pretended to be offended.

"I don't know what you are implying… But I wouldn't miss a date with a pierced cock for the world!"

"Urgh, stop it! The mental image alone is making me gag!"

Aoba stuck his tongue out to his friend and came back to work, grinning. He couldn't be happier about his decision to work in the Black Needle.